


Overexposure

by shetlandowl



Series: Lights, Camera, Action! [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Actors, Developing Relationship, Established Relationship, Fluff and Humor, Jealous Steve Rogers, Jealous Tony Stark, M/M, Past Channing Tatum/Tony Stark, Steve may or may not be a troll
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-10-18 03:33:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 15,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20632406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shetlandowl/pseuds/shetlandowl
Summary: A story written in the style of a 'who done it?' - except it'showand not awho, and theitis Steve and Tony's engagement.(Or is it?)





	1. Fifteen months later

**Author's Note:**

> I'm personally curious about continuing this and playing more with non-linear story telling (as in [Double Exposure](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16481837)), but I am also happy leaving this as-is if there's not much interest. So if you like it, let me know!
> 
> **Note for Ch. 1**: There are some large images and unusual formatting that may be difficult to see properly on a phone/small screen.

lornayorna posted in IRON BUNS DAILY on August 28th, 2019, 4:16 pm  
**WHAT DID I JUST SEE WITH MY OWN TWO EYES**

Tony Stark posts a photo of what looks like a ceiling with a mysterious message that sounds a lot like…… an ENGAGEMENT announcement??? 

IBD, tell me I’m crazy!!

Add comment 62 Comments

_mrs_jingleballs (August 28th, 2019, 4:16pm)_  
Ring or it didn’t happen

    

_lornayorna (August 28th, 2019, 4:17pm)_  
But what else could it be??

_mrs_jingleballs (August 28th, 2019, 4:19pm)_  
Not sure, but it’s weird that neither of them are in the picture. Maybe it’s a prank?

_gloriousbubbles93 (August 28th, 2019, 4:18pm)_  
omFG if this is what it sounds like HOW COULD HE NOT TELL US HWAT HAPPENED

    

_lornayorna (August 28th, 2019, 4:19pm)_  
IT SOUNDS LIKE CAPTAIN AMERICA PROPOSED

    

_comicraven (August 28th, 2019, 4:19pm)_  
If he was going to end up with anyone, who better than captain fucking america?

_mrs_jingleballs (August 28th, 2019, 4:23pm)_  
But now they’re BOTH off the market!

    

_purple_sprinklies (August 28th, 2019, 4:21pm)_  
hes real private tho remember he wouldn’t say who he dated before rogers?

_mrs_jingleballs (August 28th, 2019, 4:25pm)_  
Wasn’t it Misty Copeland?

_lornayorna (August 28th, 2019, 4:27pm)_  
Came here to say tihs the friend that was setting them up said she theyy had a date and everything for when he got back from promo tour

_bangingts (August 28th, 2019, 4:18pm)_  
This is so exciting!!!!

    

_comicraven (August 28th, 2019, 4:21pm)_  
seriously can’t wait for all the pictures!!! they’re both so fucking hot

_bangingts (August 28th, 2019, 4:24pm)_  
I wonder sometimes what they’d look like if looks wasn’t part of the Hollywood job description.

_comicraven (August 28th, 2019, 4:24pm)_  
yeah they’d still be hot af

_bangingts (August 28th, 2019, 4:24pm)_  
At least Tony would be, no question about it.

    

_pennylaneismydog (August 28th, 2019, 4:35pm)_  
still not over how he looked in _the custodian. _how can you describe that ass besides peak perfection??? 

_bangingts (August 28th, 2019, 4:36pm)_  
Tan, muscular, yet surprisingly well-rounded and supple.

_gloriousbubbles93 (August 28th, 2019, 4:42pm)_  
please say more.

_bangingts (August 28th, 2019, 4:45pm)_  
More.

_stalinovskovichdaviddivichski (August 28th, 2019, 4:23pm)_  
ommmggggggg my body is READY!!!! You think he’s gonna get married with his regular butt? NO. IBD THIS IS DEF CON 5: WE ARE LEVELLING UP TO HONEYMOON BOOTY!!!!

    

_bangingts (August 28th, 2019, 4:26pm)_  
Oh, GOD. I hadn’t even thought of that!!! I hope you’re right!!

_stalinovskovichdaviddivichski (August 28th, 2019, 4:28pm)_  
It’s coming into an election year, we need this

_bangingts (August 28th, 2019, 4:30pm)_  
IDK he **is** marrying Captain America. People have done more for less.

_stalinovskovichdaviddivichski (August 28th, 2019, 4:33pm)_  
hahahahahahahahahahahaha!! Omg i love the idea that steve rogers woke up and decided, i know we might end up with that orange dumpster fire for another four years BUT WHAT IF WE HAD AN EVEN BETTER TONY STARK ASS

_bangingts (August 28th, 2019, 4:37pm)_  
PREACH!

    

_gloriousbubbles93 (August 28th, 2019, 4:29pm)_  
HOW. Do you seriously think there’s ROOM FOR MORE PERFECTION!?

_purple_sprinklies (August 28th, 2019, 4:32pm)_  
THERE ISN’T  
  


_comicraven (August 28th, 2019, 4:34pm)_  
Seconding this motion!  
  


_bangingts (August 28th, 2019, 4:37pm)_  


stalinovskovichdaviddivichski (August 28th, 2019, 4:42pm)  
  


_marie__0069 (August 28th, 2019, 4:44pm)_  
uh but what about  


_bangingts (August 28th, 2019, 4:45pm)_  
..............That shouldn’t be as hot as it is.

_pennylaneismydog (August 28th, 2019, 4:26pm)_  
uhhhhhh about time? It’s almost been two years. They should’ve gotten divorced and cheated on their respective SOs with each other by now. 

    

_lornayorna (August 28th, 2019, 4:26pm)_  
Tony Stark would NEVER cheat!! 

    

_mrs_jingleballs (August 28th, 2019, 4:34pm)_  
They’re really trying though, you gotta give them credit 

_pennylaneismydog (August 28th, 2019, 4:37pm) _  
ngghhhhh that video of cap at the concert with tony’s mom learning how to dance got me fucking pregnant

_mrs_jingleballs (August 28th, 2019, 4:38pm)_  
I FORGOT ABOUT THAT 

_marie__0069 (August 28th, 2019, 4:27pm)_  
it’s ok lorna: they’re young and they’re both hot, it’s not gonna last.

    

_comicraven (August 28th, 2019, 4:32pm)_  
Steve wouldn’t have come out of the closet if it wasn’t real

    

_bangingts (August 28th, 2019, 4:34pm)_  
Given the divorce rate, there’s a good chance of that. 

    

_lornayorna (August 28th, 2019, 4:35pm)_  
idk is it worth tony being sad?

_bangingts (August 28th, 2019, 4:35pm)_  
Good point.

_comicraven (August 28th, 2019, 4:37pm)_  
uhhh have you seen steve rogers??? Why would you divorce that man??

    

_mrs_jingleballs (August 28th, 2019, 4:42pm)_  
was i the only one who saw steve’s cameo in _Grover?_ the captain is packing

_bangingts (August 28th, 2019, 4:44pm)_  
Pretty sure they used padding. Sorry.


	2. Present day

Eleven years in the business, and Steve was still making rookie mistakes. Did he communicate openly about his insecurities? No. Did he reach out for help from friends and trusted allies? No. 

Did he watch the source material to form his own opinion? No.

Did he burn through his week’s booze quota and read every relevant post on ONTD? Yes.

Did he look up YouTube clips from _Magic Mike_ to remind himself of what Tony had enjoyed before him? Yes.

Did he read the YouTube comments? Yes. 

Tony looked amazing in the stills from the Graham Norton interview where he and Channing promoted _Van Helsing_. Laughter danced in his eyes, his coiffed, dark chocolate hair was just on the right side of misbehaving, and, _god_, his _legs_. They looked like they went on forever. His jeans hugged him in a way that drew Steve’s eye without being obscene. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t seen Tony in weeks, Steve still remembered the firm, supple strength of Tony’s thighs where he’d held him down, where his whole world had come apart and come together all at once. Where he’d held on for dear life with all his hope in sight. 

_‘I’ve never been more excited to be next to a man’s legs in my life’_

It wasn’t what Tatum had said as much as the look the camera caught him giving Tony when he said it. 

But yeah, it was a lot about what he said, too.

> **RECEIVED FROM @ 01:13 >**  
Steve Rogers you’ve left me on read for four hours what is going on?

> **RECEIVED FROM @ 01:13 >**  
Don’t make me send my mom to kick in your door

> **RECEIVED FROM @ 01:14 >**  
She is Cuban, Steve. She escaped Castro. She ain’t afraid of shit she will take you down

Not two minutes later, his phone rang. A part of Steve wanted to confront him, but most of him wanted to hide and live in the magic of their budding, two-month-old relationship just one day longer. One more week and they would make it to three months, and that was what, five years in Hollywood-time? 

Somewhere between the hurt and the fear, Steve picked up the phone. 

“Steve? You there?” he heard Tony ask immediately. “Babe, talk to me. What’s going on?”

“I read the YouTube comments,” Steve mumbled, his words slurring noticeably after his fifth shot of tequila. “You and Channing look really happy together.”

“Oh, no,” Tony sighed softly to himself, and Steve wanted to scream. Anything, but the tired pity. This was the moment where Steve would hear how Tony had changed his mind, how he and Channing motherfucking Tatum were going to give it another try. 

“You haven’t watched the interview yet, have you?”

Tony’s words gave Steve pause. He wasn’t frustrated or impatient; he wasn’t even offended. Tony sounded _amused_. 

“I’m not letting you go to sleep like this, Steve,” Tony decided for both of them. “You’ve got a whole movie riding on you. We’ll watch it together; pull up the video.”

The situation was different and more serious, but it wasn’t so long ago that Tony had said something similar about a movie that was only theirs. Something they had created together before Tony left to promote _Van Helsing_ around the world and Steve moved to some nondescript, professionally furnished apartment in the East Village to film _Laws of Attraction_. All at once, Steve’s body was keyed up in a very unexpected way, and it didn’t help that he could hear each of the soft, inviting sounds Tony made as he dropped into his hotel bed and pulled his blankets up around him to get cozy. 

While they’d only been dating for two months, they’d been friends much longer. A lot of the worst hurdles were behind them; they knew how to communicate, they trusted each other implicitly, and they counted on each other’s support more than anyone else. The consequence, however, was that little went unnoticed between them. Every expression and tone was recognized and interpreted intuitively, and if Steve wanted to keep the worst of his pitiful insecurities from Tony, he’d have to be very careful. 

To give Tony’s sixth sense a wide berth, Steve cleared his throat and hummed in the affirmative to indicate he was ready. “Got it.” 

Graham brought out his guests one at a time - Rob Brydon, Miriam Margolyes, Tony Stark, and Channing Tatum. On the small screen of Steve’s laptop, the crowd’s cheers burgeoned with excitement as Channing Tatum came on the stage to wave, greet the couch, and take his seat. 

“They’re screaming like you’re about to take your clothes off,” Graham laughed, and the couch laughed - all except for Channing, who blushed and gracefully declined. “Alright, well - we tried, so that’s our expectations managed for the night,” Graham quickly informed the crowd in feigned solemnity before turning back to his guests. 

“Welcome everyone! All settled? Drinks at the ready as we make our introductions. You see, Miriam has a thing,” he explained, both to the audience and to the three men on the couch. “She doesn’t like to know who she’s coming on with, it keeps things interesting. How are you doing tonight, Miriam?”

The bubbly, cheerful woman with her mop of white and grey curls studied the men for a brief time before smiling at Rob Brydon. 

“I have seen you on the television, I believe; your face is quite familiar, though I’m not sure why,” she admitted, to which Brydon, a trained comedian, could only agree. 

“To be honest, I’m not sure why I’m on the telly either.” 

“And Channing Tatum, Tony Stark; have you worked with them? Or perhaps you saw _Captain America_?”

“The fourth one,” Tony clarified to help her, but she only looked shocked. 

“They made three sequels of that dreadful film?”

Steve snorted in a burst of unexpected laughter. The audience howled with amusement and Tony bit his lip to temper his own bark of laughter into poorly contained giggling. Even Graham rolled over in his seat so the cameras wouldn’t catch him cackling on national television. 

All the way in LA, Tony snickered to himself knowingly, and hearing his gentle laugh soothed the last of Steve’s fears. 

“And what about _Magic Mike_? Have you heard of it?” Graham prompted next while Miriam was patting Tony’s knee and saying she was sure he was delightful even if she didn’t like his movie. “Very famous for its dancing; it was a global sensation.”

Miriam turned her attention to Channing and, without shame or apology, said, “Darling, I’m 72… I don’t know about dancing and songs, but I am sure you are highly admired.”

“But there is one final guest who’ll be coming on a little later, surely you’ll have heard of him. The fastest man alive will be joining us, ladies and gentlemen: Usain Bolt!”

The audience cheered, and this time, even Miriam shared in their excitement. 

“He set the new world records, did he not?” she wondered, and her recognition of a guest had Graham beaming with a smile. 

“Yes, he did! And with style, even. He’s set a whole new bar for human speed - and I know, you, Channing, you’re very excited to meet him?”

“I’ve never been more excited to be next to another man’s legs in my life,” Channing admitted with genuine thrill and anxiety, and - _there_ it was. _The look_. That look someone had captured in a screenshot and posted on ONTD to stoke Steve’s deepest, most repressed insecurities. 

Except watching it live, that look wasn’t the tawdry, lascivious glance the picture made it out to be. Even with that wailing voice of jealousy crying for dominance in his heart, Steve easily recognized the bid for support in Channing’s eyes when he glanced across at Tony, and the reassurance offered by Tony when he smiled back. 

Steve paused the video. “I thought… that wasn’t what I thought he said,” he whispered into the attentive silence on the other end of the call. “I thought he was talking about your legs.”

“You might be the only person, living or dead, who’d choose my legs over Usain Bolt’s,” Tony informed him matter of factly, and Steve wasn’t sure if he wanted to cry out in disagreement or count himself grateful. In either case, that suited Steve perfectly since he had no interest in sharing the privilege of worshipping Tony’s legs with anyone. 

“We have a lot of exciting movies and shows to talk about tonight,” Graham continued on the screen, “let us begin with the hero and the monster sitting on the couch who bring us the first blockbuster of the winter season: Van Helsing! It opens everywhere on Halloween weekend—but this isn’t the typical spooky fare, is it?”

Together, Channing and Tony explained how the movie embedded itself into the regional folktales, mythos, and urban legends to bring the worst imaginable mortal fears to life in the 21st century. Grudgingly, Steve had to admit they seemed like no more than good friends. Jealous as he was, Channing easily made Tony laugh. Who was Steve to wish anyone ill for that? 

“I still want you to come with me as my date to the New York premier,” Tony said over the phone, his voice lowered a little in case something more important was happening on Steve’s screen. “You don’t have to walk the carpet if it’s too much, but it would mean a lot to me if you were there.”

“You think I’ll miss seeing you in one of the most iconic roles of all time? I have three alerts set on my phone about it, I—” Steve abruptly interrupted himself and paused the video. “Did—did she just say—”

A muffled _thump_ told Steve the phone had been discarded and, from a near distance, he heard Tony cracking up. 

He rewound the video back by twenty seconds and hit play again. 

“I’m nervous of asking you this,” Graham said to Miriam through quiet laughter. “But don’t you have a similar story where you met an American man in Cambridge?”

“When I was a student? Yes, that was before I was a lesbian; I was still sorting myself out, as you do at university,” she started, answering thoughtfully and fearlessly in a way Steve rarely witnessed in Hollywood. “I was on my bike and we stopped at the traffic lights, where there to my left or right, whatever it was, there was a car; an open car with an American soldier inside. And something crazy took hold of me then. You know that feeling,” she added, looking to Rob on her left and Tony to her right. 

“Intimately,” Tony assured her, and, judging by the sudden laughter from the audience, a good number of them were aware of Tony’s relationship with the embodiment of a legendary American (super)soldier. 

“Then you know, it just takes over. There’s nothing you can do about it. So I turned to him and I said, ‘Would you like to follow me to my college and I’ll suck you off?’”

On the screen, Steve watched as Tony clapped his hands over his face in an instinctive reaction to a sudden, genuine fit of laughter. 

“I would’ve killed for that line!” he whimpered through his laughter, and it took Miriam a moment to catch up with the rest and remember that Tony was there for his role as Dracula. 

“Of course, I should explain that back then I thought I was being a good girl,” she eventually continued with her perfectly normal story once the laughter had calmed, and Tony seemed to have come up for air at exactly the wrong time. With tears of laughter still wet in the corners of his eyes, he waited with bated breath to hear how that sentence might possibly end. 

“I thought a bad girl would have had intercourse.”

Tony and Channing seemed equally understanding of the college-age logic while Rob, at the other end of the couch, felt the need to point out: “With a _random stranger off the street_.”

“Her body, her choice,” Channing declared before anyone else could second Rob’s criticism, a sentiment shared and seconded loudly by applause from the audience. 

Miriam finished her story and the conversation naturally moved on, but Steve didn’t need to see more of the video after that. He closed his laptop up and pushed it aside as he rolled onto his back to settle in and give Tony his undivided attention. 

“Thanks, Tony,” he said on a soft breath. “Thank you for making me watch it.”

“You’re just lucky you’re not close enough for me to punch,” Tony answered with a grin in his voice, and Steve couldn’t resist smiling back. “Don’t scare me like that again.”

As gentle and affectionate as Tony sounded, Steve knew better than to take it lightly. “No more jealous YouTubing, promise. I’ll be better.”

There was a brief pause on the other end. “A little jealousy is fine,” Tony said in such a staunch attempt at innocence that his tone circled back around to mischievous. “If it’s about me, it’s okay.”

“Well, then you better appreciate it while it lasts,” Steve replied smartly, doing his best to keep a straight face even when Tony started giggling on the other end. “Listen, I hate to burst your bubble but the minute we move in together and your signature is on that lease, I’m going to start taking you for granted and letting myself go.” 

Tony’s quiet giggling bloomed into outright laughter at Steve’s outrageous threats. “What does that even mean!”

“Forget coffee in bed: you make the coffee now, that’s number one,” Steve started listing off his future crimes, and Tony was so upset and heartbroken that he dissolved into a fit of giggling again. “Two: I’m never shaving again.”

For once, Tony snorted on purpose. “The joke’s on you, I love your beard.”

“Below the neck.”

Tony squeaked in a way that might have been Steve’s name, but Steve couldn’t be sure. 

“Then I’ll do it myself,” Tony told him once he’d pulled himself together. “Have you seen _The Forty Year Old Virgin_, Steve? Brace yourself, baby,” he whispered in a smooth, husky voice that left Steve powerless to resist him. “Soon you might wish I always was away on press tours.”

A smarter, more clever man might have managed a snappy reply - something sarcastic and witty to continue the flirty banter Steve otherwise never got enough of. 

“You wish you could get rid of me that easily,” Steve answered sincerely instead. “Do your worst, Stark. I’ll be right here, waiting for you.”


	3. Eighteen months later

“Hey everybody! My first guest tonight is an actor who’s been in the business less than three years and he’s already a household name. You know him from _Captain America_, _Van Helsing_, _Men in Black_, _The Custodian_, and his new movie, _Seeking Asylum_, is out in theaters now. Please welcome back to The Late Show, Tony Stark!”

The audience lifted in cheerful applause, drowning out the sound of Tony’s racing heart and his lingering anxieties. On set, the cameras were there to capture your character, or whoever you were trying to bring to life. You could play around, you could make shit up, but there was nothing to hide behind during talk shows. Millions of Americans were tuning in to see _him_. 

It didn’t matter how many times he’d done this before, or how many times he told himself he’d feel better as soon as the conversation got started, these last seconds before he stepped out on stage still felt like hell. 

Somehow, he did it. 

“Welcome back, thank you for being here!” Stephen smiled at him, both professional and encouraging in his expression. 

“Happy to be here, thank you for having me,” Tony replied, addressing both Stephen and the audience. 

“The last time you were here, people barely knew your name,” Stephen started right in, “you were promoting _Captain America: Avengers Assemble_, nobody knew what an Iron Man was.”

“That’s right, and you were my first,” Tony said with a straight face and a seductive glance, his delivery just coy enough that Stephen ducked his head to laugh. 

“I’m honored!” he quickly recovered, still laughing. “I’m glad you were willing to come back, I’m very flattered.”

“How could I say no? I mean, is there a better audience in the world?” he said, easily scoring bonus points and applause with pandering flattery. 

“So much has changed since we last saw you. _Avengers Assemble_ was the highest grossing film last year, so it’s safe to say people know your name around the world. Have you had a chance to enjoy that? Because, tell me if this is right, you did four movies in ten months?” Stephen asked in mild awe, glancing at his card for confirmation. 

On instinct, Tony sat up and knocked on Stephen’s wooden desk. The last thing he needed was the evil eye after him. 

“I did! I was very fortunate—all actors dream of the day acting becomes our only source of income,” he said as diplomatically as he could. “And I’m lucky that they were all projects I’d do again in a heartbeat, but I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t have an agent; I didn’t know you needed breaks! We literally flew out the day MIB wrapped to start on _The Custodian_ in Vancouver, and they had to put me in maternity clothes because I’d put on forty-five pounds to look like an alien. I was supposed to be a custodian—someone who blends into the background—and here I show up looking like Luca Brasi,” Tony said with a self-deprecating roll of his eyes, then for clarification for those who didn’t know, he quickly explained, “Don Corelone’s enforcer.”

“Most people would think four movies in ten months, you’re phoning it in, but this movie ...you’ve got something special here, I really mean that. It is so timely and well-done in every respect.”

“I was offered the role in the eleventh hour. I loved the script, but Steve,” Tony’s words softened to silence at the thought of what Steve had done for him, and with a genuine, adoring smile, he tried to explain. “Steve was home with me that whole time. He turned down a lot of offers to do that, and he had a big project coming up at the same time. But he read that script and said I had to do it. He made that happen for me,” Tony finished, absently fiddling with the armrest. 

Talking about Steve and their relationship on camera was dangerous business, people saw too much too easily, and Tony wasn’t willing to share much. So he pulled himself together and changed gear before Stephen had a chance to ask anything else about America’s favorite Captain. 

“We had a really small budget, start to finish it was three weeks, but I’ll never forget that set. Everyone on the cast and crew were either immigrants or children of immigrants,” Tony told Stephen, because it was so remarkable it was worth saying. “The diversity and excitement was unlike anything I’ve experienced. People with stories from all around the world were there to make this happen because we love this country, and we love the potential and optimism we see here. And you couldn’t tell this story without people who know what it’s like to be outsiders in their own country.”

“I think that’s what stayed with me for days after I saw the movie, that inner conflict of who your character is or thinks he is,” Stephen said, serious one moment then effortlessly bringing it back to lighter humor by admitting, “it’s becoming a problem: I was in the shower two days later, shampooing my hair for five minutes because I kept thinking, if you take away reality, what is left? And is that who I am? Do I even want it to be real?”

Tony smiled brightly and laughed quietly to himself, but there was something about what Stephen said that he hadn’t thought of before. “You know, it’s a difficult movie to describe without giving too much away, but that’s maybe the best description I’ve heard yet,” Tony observed after a thoughtful pause. “This is a conflicted love letter to our current government, to the hate and the exclusion and what we are allowing our country to become. Many of us have to really grapple with what it means to be Americans today. A lot of us live in fear of our own country. These are the narratives that the writers distilled through the experiences of the main character - my character - Sebastián, who is… institutionalized?” 

“Yes, tell them what it’s about,” Stephen urged, giving Tony the space to do his job. 

“I’ll—I don’t want to say too much, but it starts with him being ‘institutionalized,’” he told the audience, using the appropriate air quotes. “But we don’t know where or by whom, and he doesn’t know whom to trust. Himself included. And the story that unfolds is him trying to free himself and get back to the life he remembers.”

“You have to see it,” Stephen added for the audience, but then quickly changed the subject to avoid saying too much. “So, what’s coming up next for you? The holidays are around the corner, are you taking some time off for anything special?” 

His questions were innocent and vague enough, but Tony caught a spark of hopeful curiosity in his expression that made it very clear what (whom) Stephen was thinking about. 

“You could just ask how he’s doing, you know,” Tony teased, his smile so bright and adoring that there was no doubt of whom he was referring to either. “I watch this show; I know you like him.”

From across the desk, Stephen blushed. “That’s, I mean, who doesn’t?”

“Every time we watch _Lord of the Rings_ \- which is more often than you think,” he told the audience ruefully before turning back to Stephen and speaking over their laughter. “He talks about you at least twice an hour—and I’m talking the director’s cut. You basically have a standing invitation every Christmas and anytime Steve gets the flu, wherever we are.”

The audience’s laughter swelled into a roar of excitement and applause, and across the desk, Stephen looked moonstruck. 

“If you’re just saying that…”

“Listen, Steve’s wouldn’t say it if he didn’t mean it. If he’s anything but a thoughtful, helpful, caring man, he’s hiding it _really_ well. Hell, we’ve been living together now for a year and a half and I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

Stephen grinned like the fanboy he was and listened eagerly, loving this personal ‘inside scoop’ of what Steve Rogers was like. “So, like, you never have fights?”

“...I mean, we are human,” Tony tried to say without laughing, “but we haven’t had a serious fight since I was allowed to eat carbs again after _Men in Black_.” 

The audience laughed easily, but Stephen’s curiosity only grew. “What’s that like, having a fight with Captain America? Cause he has that voice - the, you know the one I’m talking about?”

“The Commander Rogers voice,” Tony snickered, turning a little red at the thought. “The voice that got a promotion, yes. I know it. He tries! It doesn’t—well. Let’s just say it’s more effective when we’re not fighting, but I already know he isn’t really angry if he’s raising his voice, so it’s not as intimidating as he wants it to be.”

“It sounds like things are going well, then, so… can we assume these rumors that you’re engaged might be real?” Stephen prompted mildly, and Tony’s grin softened into a private smile, which he smoothly covered with a smiling facade. 

Without a word, Tony raised his left hand - the one closest to Stephen - to bring his attention to his naked ring-finger. Stephen retaliated in action, too, bringing out a printed shot of Tony’s most ambiguous and controversial Instagram post yet. 

Tony was the first to break the silent stand-off with a burst of laughter, blushing even with the stage make-up. 

“Explain, please, sir,” Stephen said with an all too innocent smile. “There are a lot of people who want to know.”

“What can I say?” Tony wondered out loud, making a show of considering something he was never going to share. “Steve’s latest project took us to Lisbon for six months and he had a lot of night shoots, which meant I was often a solo tourist. I fell in love with Lisbon and Portugal—I love the people, the food, the art, the history, the nature - it got to where anytime Steve couldn’t fall asleep, he’d ask me about what new tiles I’d seen that day and I would talk for thirty, maybe forty minutes before realizing he was snoring. Worked better than Ambien,” he said with a fond grin that he valiantly tried to disguise as a frown. 

But Stephen wasn’t so easily distracted, and he tapped the little card with Tony’s IG post to bring his attention back to it. “And you said yes to…” he repeated with a sly, playful tone, trying one more time to get a straight answer out of Tony. 

Tony pursed his lips in consideration. “A 16th century villa with original, hand-painted tiles.”

“Oh, you think that’s it, it’s over? You can’t just leave us hanging!” Stephen finally complained, and Tony’s composure broke with another burst of giggling, delighted laughter. “Stick around, we’ll be right back with more Tony Stark!”


	4. Present day

As if the snow wasn’t bad enough, the wind chill was downright malicious. Fucking Boston. Five seconds outdoors was five seconds too long, but there was nothing for it: Tony had to get from the cab to the apartment somehow. 

It wasn’t until Tony was hauling his two duffle bags, computer bag, parka, and rolling suitcase through several inches of grimey snow that it occurred to him that he might have overpacked. Grouchy and irritated, and so very, very cold on his walk from the curb to the steps of the apartment, Tony was sorely tempted to dump everything in the dirty snowbank and find a ride back to the airport when Steve appeared in the doorway like the hero in some fever dream. 

“Give me,” he ordered as much as he offered, taking Tony’s jacket and his big rolling suitcase from him and effortlessly jogging them up the stairs. Clearly, the man felt neither pain nor cold, and if he hadn’t been so eager to feel his own skin again, Tony would’ve been too shocked to move. As it was, Tony hurried after Steve and shut the door behind them. 

Still, nothing went as planned. No eager hands or passionate kisses welcomed Tony; whether Steve had noticed his pale, chapped lips, stiff posture, or some other sign of Tony’s imminent death by exposure and hypothermia, he herded Tony to an enormous couch in the living room in front of a pleasant, crackling fire. 

One by one, Steve carried away his bags, coats, and even his shoes before joining him on the couch with an oversized fleece and flannel blanket to help bring Tony back to life. 

“I feel cold just looking at you,” Steve said under his breath, draping the blanket around his boyfriend before taking Tony’s hands in his to help warm him up by squeezing and rubbing feeling back into them. “What do you have in those bags, anyway? Is there anything left in your apartment?” 

“I like to be prepared,” Tony said, attempting to sound like a reasonable adult. 

“Right, and that’s why you showed up in loafers,” Steve observed, teasing and without judgment. 

In reality, Tony hadn’t spent that long in the blistering Boston cold. Between the blanket and Steve’s help, he quickly warmed up, but that didn’t mean Steve had to know. After three weeks apart, Tony would risk overheating if it meant having Steve’s hands on him again. 

“I’m glad you got in before the storm,” Steve told him in a quieter, more serious voice. “They were talking about shutting down Logan for the afternoon planes, there’s a blizzard hitting tonight. It’s going to be bad for a few days.” 

Tony didn’t have to be a genius to know Steve wasn’t just worried about Tony getting stuck at an airport. 

Without so much as a warning, Tony got up and straddled Steve’s hips, sinking into his lap and circling his arms around Steve’s shoulders to wrap their bodies together in the blanket’s comforting weight. Steve’s hands instinctively found Tony’s hips, his fingers curling protectively around him in a gentle grip. He didn’t squeeze or move Tony in any way, and there was something about his inclination to be protective rather than possessive that made Tony heart skip a beat. 

“I expected a lot of things to happen after three weeks apart,” Tony mused between a string of playful, feather-light kisses he brushed across Steve’s nose, jaw, and his lips. “Cuddling on a couch fully dressed never crossed my mind.”

This close, there was nothing Steve could hide from him. Tony lifted and rolled his hips over the growing bulge in Steve’s jeans and watched, mesmerized, as Steve’s eyes fluttered closed for a beat and his lips parted in a soft gasp of unexpected pleasure. 

“You were cold,” Steve said in a whisper, as if any other man wouldn’t happily use the same excuse to get Tony naked in bed, or naked in a warm shower, or naked in front of the fireplace in a nest of pillows and plush blankets. And frankly, Tony would have been all for a horny welcome, but privately (grudgingly) he could admit that there was something special about simply being held and comforted in arms that never wanted to let him go. 

Then, more quietly, Steve carefully said, “I didn’t want to mess this up.” 

He said it so softly that Tony wasn’t sure he was meant to hear it. Tony pressed a chaste, lingering kiss to Steve’s cheek before straightening in Steve’s lap to watch his face more carefully. 

His expression betrayed a tumble of emotions. Excitement and affection, determination, but also apprehension and doubt. In the short time since their friendship took a romantic turn, they had spent more time apart than together. 

“I watch our videos two, three times a day. I’ve memorized every sound you make,” Steve murmured, sweeping his big palms up and down Tony’s back before taking him more firmly around the waist. “Every look into the camera. The memory of you looking up at me… but, this isn’t just sex, is it?”

“Steve, no,” Tony promised, relaxing further into Steve’s lap so he wasn’t looking down on him anymore. Face to face, Tony brushed a kiss over his lips before pressing his forehead to Steve’s. “Your friendship isn’t worth risking for sex.”

Tony felt Steve’s hands squeeze his waist gently in acknowledgment, a quiet sign of gratitude, and the relieved smile on Steve’s lips comforted him. But under him, Steve’s body still felt tense with questions he hadn’t voice yet. Tony waited with what little patience he had, combing his fingers through Steve’s hair absently and holding him close until Steve was ready to say more. 

Minutes passed and they sat together in silence until Steve found his voice again. 

“I need us to talk about the sex outside of sex,” he finally said. Tony lifted his head to watch him and found Steve smiling at him - sheepish and adoring, but sure of what he wanted - and Tony couldn’t help but smile back and steal a quick kiss from the lips he’d missed for too long. 

“I mean it, Tony,” Steve said, doing his very best not to get swept away before they’d finished this conversation. “If I’m not giving you what you want, you’re the only one who can tell me.”

Tony wet his lips, chasing the memory of Steve’s lips on his while considering his words. “Check-ins are good,” he agreed, tracing the rounded tip of Steve’s ears with his thumbs between playing with his hair. “And you, you’ll do the same for me?”

“I will,” Steve promised without hesitation, his voice so low and deep that it rumbled through him like a predatory growl. “Living with you, being a part of your life, it’s all I’ve thought about these past few months. But filming it, or having sex after a long time apart isn’t the same as being together every day for eight months. I don’t want,” his words faltered in a moment of insecurity, but he quickly pushed through. “I don’t want to lose your interest.”

Tony shifted in Steve’s lap, trying to find the right words to say. Nothing felt right; they hadn’t been together for Tony to have evidence, so any promise would consist of hollow words. What Tony _did_ have evidence of was Steve. Steve had come a long way from that unremarkable afternoon in Australia when he confessed how he felt. Like everything else, he’d taken on the challenge of pleasing Tony with dedicated enthusiasm, trying anything twice and leaving no suggestion unexplored. The least Tony could do was recognize his effort. 

“You’re right, it will be different,” Tony admitted softly, scraping his blunt nails slowly up and down the curve of his neck. “But may I introduce a different frame? Just for the sake of argument?”

Curiosity, affection, and a touch of exasperation quickly pushed aside the last traces of insecurity that had clawed their way into Steve’s thoughts. “That’s a first. You’re asking for permission?” Steve teased. “Who are you and where is Tony Stark?” 

With a snort that in no way sounded like giggling laughter, Tony very firmly pointed out, “It was _rhetorical_.”

“In that case, by all means: please go ahead,” Steve drawled in a playful tone. “You haven’t been wrong yet.”

Tony’s smile stretched into a pleased grin, but he couldn’t let flattery distract him now. “You’re being pretty self-centered here, if you haven’t noticed. You’re assuming that because I’m the first man you’ve been with that you won’t know how to satisfy me,” Tony summarized without judgment, watching Steve’s expression for clues that he’d guessed wrong. 

There were none. 

“If you weren’t so wrapped up in what you think is a deficit, maybe you would see all the ways you leave everyone else wanting - man or woman. Nobody has gone out of their way to satisfy me like you,” Tony confided in him, “and if you think about it from my perspective, that is the sexiest, most exciting experience I’ve ever had.”

Steve looked caught between hopeful disbelief and confusion. “I don’t understand,” he finally admitted. “How?”

“Almost anything that we do together, you’ll only have my preferences as your reference,” Tony reminded him with a sly smirk that only spelled trouble. “Steve, you’re not a pity project or a lover with training wheels. You’re just learning to change gear from women to men, and where you see inexperience, I see someone whose skills are exclusively tailored to pleasing _me_,” Tony added with a pointed emphasis. “So you tell me: who could possibly compete with you?” 

*** 

“If I read one more script about soldiers or police officers or special agents, I’m going to scream.”

From across the kitchen, Steve stopped mid-way through separating an egg and turned to look at Tony over his shoulder. Sure enough, he was back in the armchair he’d pulled up to the kitchen table where Steve had abandoned some offers the previous night. Steve preferred a regular kitchen chair to read in for work since it kept him from getting too comfortable, but Tony leaned hard in the opposite direction - especially if he was reading scripts for Steve. He cozied up with a script like a new thriller by a favorite author, and if he was quiet for more than thirty minutes, Steve knew it was a winner. 

And when he started commentating, it didn’t end. 

“Then stop reading the ones Peggy sends to me,” Steve suggested half-heartedly and went back to his eggs. He needed six with four egg whites, and Tony needed seven with five. He wasn’t entirely sure whose he was working on anymore, or how many egg whites was in which bowl. 

“Just skimming for the sexy parts… that last one had you jumping naked into a vat of milk,” Tony reported, though as the sound of turning pages started up again, he became a little more distracted. “I’d pay good money to see that, que rico.”

Steve rolled his eyes and dumped the yolk in his hand into the discard bowl. One extra egg white wouldn’t hurt either of them. 

“What a waste of milk,” Steve muttered, mostly thinking out loud. If Tony had found another scene that required Steve’s clothes to come off, he wasn’t likely to hear much anyway. “Baby oil looks better and at least you can re-use it afterwards.”

He had his back turned to the kitchen table, but he heard the moment Tony’s absent, thoughtful humming stopped and he set the script down with deliberate calm. 

“On behalf of the American people: How angry would you be if I shared that goldmine with Coulson?”

“Tony, don’t even think about it.” 

Tony snickered to himself and settled back to get into the script again. Steve counted up the yolks in his and Tony’s respective bowls, then added an egg white to his before starting to cook up Tony’s portion. 

“Didn’t two new offers come in for you yesterday?” 

“Yes, they were parts I’ve waited my whole life to play: drug lords number 37 and 38,” Tony muttered, turning pages more quickly now, presumably to get through the repetitive plot to find the next gratuitous opportunity to imagine Steve showing some skin. “This may shock you, but I called them this morning and turned down both the Colombian drug lord and Brazilian drug lord - who, plot twist, is also a pimp.”

Steve turned to look at him again, but this time Tony’s face was strategically hidden behind the script in his hands. Clearly, he wasn’t taking it as well as he wanted Steve to think. 

“So, how many of them were named Hector?” Steve asked casually. Tony didn’t move the script to show his face, but Steve didn’t need to see his face to interpret his reaction: he watched Tony’s shoulders relax and heard Tony snickering behind his make-shift shield, and felt relief settle in his chest. 

“Only one. The Brazilian was Fausto.”

Steve smiled down at the cooking eggs as Tony continued reading and resumed his quiet humming - something he probably didn’t notice he did, but that Steve coveted deeply in these quiet moments they shared. 

Living together, even if it was temporary, made so many things in Steve’s life feel less dull and repetitive. Although they were sent most of their meals from their respective nutritionists, they were responsible for their two morning meals. Most days he had to be on set around the same time Tony would start getting ready for the gym, but Tony would get up early to wake him up with coffee and hang out with him while he ate breakfast, then send him off to work with a kiss. 

Mornings like this, when Steve wasn’t needed on set and they could both sleep in, Steve woke up early on his own just for the pleasure of waking Tony up with freshly brewed coffee. Watching his peaceful, sleeping face scrunch up irritably at the thought of waking up, then sniff deliberately for the heady, flavorful aroma of fresh, hot coffee was one of Steve’s favorite ways to start the day. Tony would push himself up to sitting long enough to find the coffee, cradle it in his hands, then fall into Steve’s anchoring weight for warmth and comfort. Sometimes they sat together like that for five to ten minutes, Tony sipping his drink while Steve indulged in the drowsy, unguarded affection Tony shared so easily in those cozy, private moments before facing the world. 

That quiet time together was the closest Steve ever got to meditation, and privately he wished they could find an arrangement that let them start most of their days together. 

Steve was just pondering how long one had to wait before ‘boyfriend’ was upgraded to ‘partner’ when the peaceful silence was interrupted by an incoming email chime on Tony’s phone. He slid the eggs onto a plate along with refried black beans, steamed broccoli, and so many jalapeños it made Steve’s eyes water and carried it to the table for Tony. 

He only meant to deliver the plate then go back to get his own food going, but Tony was frowning down at his phone in a way that made Steve want to distract him. He had no interest in the phone, but he couldn’t resist sneaking in close to indulge in a moment of intimacy, first pressing a loving, unhurried kiss to Tony’s shoulder, then trailing a few more up his shamefully unblemished neck. Tony curled his free hand around the back of Steve’s head, holding him close and threading his fingers through Steve’s hair while Steve nuzzled into the soft junction of his neck and shoulders. 

“Just because I’m here doesn’t mean you can ignore your phone, babe,” he informed Steve in quiet, laughing words. “Peggy wants you to call her back.”

The world was a perfect place, holding and being held by the man he loved. It was so easy to ignore the world, even if that included his intimidating agent. Steve mumbled something half-heartedly and nuzzled closer - only pulling back when Tony jerked under him with a gasp and a shudder from the scrape of Steve’s stubble. 

Steve carefully moved closer a moment later, this time to apologize and soothe with feather-light kisses, but Tony tugged more insistently on Steve’s hair. 

“Did you just say ‘busy’?” he asked quietly when Steve reluctantly pulled back to listen. 

“You’re already talking to her, just tell her I’m busy. We’re eating, she can wait,” Steve explained, but Tony’s momentary disbelief started to look more like irritation. 

“Estás jugando? I’m not talking to her because I want to,” Tony said in slow, clipped words. “I’m talking to her because _you_ are ignoring her and you know she can reach me if it’s important. I am not your secretary, Steve.”

There was definitely a part of Steve that wanted to say, ‘you’re looking at her email right now, how hard is it to press _Reply_ and type out five little words: he’ll call you back later!’ But the bigger part of him remembered what week ten of a crash diet felt like, and that was the voice Steve tried to hang on to before he acted defensively. 

“You’re right,” he said after taking a moment to quiet his initial reaction. “I’ll get my phone and answer her. Don’t wait for me,” he added, pushing Tony’s plate closer before going to do what he said. “Eat while it’s warm.”

It took all of three minutes to get his phone out of the bedroom, text Peggy that he’d call her in a few hours when Tony was at the gym, then return to the kitchen to get his own food in order. 

Tony’s food was untouched on the kitchen table, and Tony was at the stove, filling Steve’s plate with scrambled eggs to bring to the table so they could eat together. He waited for Steve to take a seat before putting the plate down for him. 

“I meant what I said,” he said quietly, and Steve turned in his seat so he was facing Tony, reaching out for him to urge him closer. Tony obliged easily, standing between Steve’s knees. The fifteen pounds of muscle he’d put on already had mostly concentrated in his legs and he barely fit there anymore, but Steve adjusted easily by sliding closer to the edge of the chair and spreading his knees to accommodate Tony’s bigger size. 

“You’re getting too comfortable letting me be your go-between, but I could have said it better. I’m sorry, Steve.”

“Hey, no, it’s okay. It’s the diet,” Steve reminded him, brushing his hands up the sides of Tony’s thighs. If the situation hadn’t been serious, he would have slid his hands up the backs of Tony’s legs to cup and knead his rounder, bigger, more muscular ass in the palms of his hands, but he fought back the urge to give Tony his full attention. 

“You’ll feel better after your workout, I promise. The endorphins help,” Steve continued, reaching to hold Tony’s hands before he caved and indulged. “Napping helps, too. Why don’t you take your breakfast in bed and I’ll finish here?”

Tony squeezed Steve’s hands gently, looking at them for a beat before turning back to Steve and looking him straight in the eyes as he guided Steve’s hands around his body to squeeze his ass. 

“What if I want some endorphins now?” he asked, lowering his voice and arching his back just enough to press into Steve’s waiting palms. “Could I take you in bed instead?”

It was all Steve could do not to squeeze tight and tear Tony’s sweatpants off his body. 

“Not now, Tony,” he said instead, apologetic. “I think we need to talk.”

Tony stared back at him like those were the last words he expected to hear. 

“What? Why?” he asked, his tone teetering between anger and fear. “Because I was angry?”

“No, not at all—”

“Then what? Ya no me quieres?” he demanded, looking down at himself in anger. “This is only what seventeen pounds of muscle looks like, Steve; are you going to dump me before we even get to thirty?”

As much as Steve enjoyed having his hands where he often felt they belonged, he couldn’t take it anymore. He scrubbed his hands over his face slowly, muffling a grunt of frustration and taking a moment to remind himself that he knew exactly what Tony was going through. He’d just never had to deal with himself before, and karma was - apparently - a bitch. 

“Tony, you look so good I could lick you clean instead of letting you take a shower after the gym,” Steve drawled as he dropped his hands into his lap. “Can we figure out what’s going on first?” 

“Nothing’s going on, you said it yourself: it’s the diet,” Tony insisted, but Steve only shook his head. 

“Short temper, yes, that’s the diet,” Steve agreed, “irritable, that’s the diet. And maybe I’m reading too much into it,” he admitted, “but I need you to know I’m not going to be upset with you if you’re angry with me.”

The words caught Tony by surprise, and it was finally enough that he pulled a chair out to sit down next to Steve, signalling that he was ready to talk. 

“It’s not what you think,” Tony said, his lips twisted into a wry frown. “When you walked away I couldn’t stop thinking that you’re wrapping up here in a week, and we move out to London in a month. Time’s going to fly after that, who knows how often I’ll see you with both of us working, and then… well. But I wasn’t worried about your reaction, Steve,” he promised, “I just didn’t want to waste any of this time being angry.”

The answer was so simple Steve didn’t know how to react. 

“Compromise?” Tony said after a short stretch of silence where all Steve managed to do was to blush like a schoolboy. “Eat on the couch and watch something with Kevin Kline? Helen Mirren? Anna Kendrick?”

“I kinda liked your earlier suggestion better,” Steve admitted with a hopeful but sheepish smile. “If it’s still on offer?”

“More than Helen Mirren?” Tony gasped in feigned shock, but he grinned back almost immediately, reaching for Steve’s hands and hauling himself up against the counterbalance of Steve’s weight. 

Then, as if on a whim of curiosity, he wondered, “Can you still carry me?”

As if seventeen pounds would change Steve’s answer. As if he hadn’t already adjusted his own weight training to anticipate a partner in his own weight-range. 

“Always,” he promised, and with a smirk of satisfaction, he lifted Tony straight up so Tony could wrap his arms and legs around him. 

Casual displays of strength had a way of turning Tony into putty, and he wasted no time wrapping himself around his boyfriend, kissing the smug smirk right off Steve’s face. The intensity almost had Steve toppling backwards, but as satisfying as it may be to fuck Tony on a bed of scripts, Steve found his balance, hoisted Tony into a better grip, and carried his boyfriend to their bedroom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations: 
> 
> No hables asi de ti mismo - Don't talk about yourself that way.  
Estás jugando? - Are you kidding me?  
Ya no me quieres? - Do you not want me anymore?


	5. Twenty months later

“You know… if you came on last week, we’d talk about your upcoming movie, _Red Notice_, that’s opening next weekend,” Jimmy Kimmel said as the audience’s enthusiastic applause and cheers slowly quieted down. “I mean, you worked with Gal Gadot, who is, is—”

“Shockingly good at poker,” Steve filled in, to the surprise and amusement of their audience. 

“And Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson! Who is possibly the nicest man alive.”

“And can bench press me without breaking a sweat,” Steve added, this time to the delighted shock of the audience. Steve gave them a look, as if to say ‘no, but _really_’. “Oh, he did. In the middle of set—but I got him back, I beat him in a hundred meter sprint.”

The audience burst into applause and laughing whoops of triumph, and Steve couldn’t help but preen just a little for them. Across the desk, Jimmy chuckled and shook his head. “I think I would, too, if a man like that was running behind me!” 

The audience and Steve both laughed easily, but as it naturally quieted down, Jimmy turned to Steve with a more intent, curious look. “But two days ago, on December 9th, they announced the nominations for this year’s Golden Globes…” 

Across from him, Steve’s facade of relaxed composure began to slip. He wet his lips and did his utmost to press them together. He hadn’t faced the question in public yet - and certainly not in front of cameras and a live studio audience. 

Even with all his years of experience, this was the first time in a long time that Steve wasn’t sure how to contain himself. The world didn’t need to see everything, did they? Did they want to know that he was still reeling from the staggering excitement and shock, or how his heart felt so full with love and joy that it threatened to burst out of his chest?

But most of all, Steve had an irrational fear that if he acknowledge it publicly, he’d wake up and find out it was all a dream. 

“Tony Stark is the first ever openly gay actor nominated in the Best Actor in a Motion Picture category, and the third ever Latino actor nominated.” 

Whether he meant to pause or not, the audience’s reaction forced his hand. It started as thundering applause and grew into a standing ovation, whistles and hollering and an incredible, sustained roar that Steve felt deep in his bones. He wanted to run out to them and share in the excitement, but all he could do was thank them over and over again, until eventually they were reined in and told to sit. 

If Steve had any doubts about what to share, they were all forgotten. 

“That,” Jimmy grinned, referring to their audience, “is how so many of us feel. Like, normally people might shrug off a nomination, but _first person nominated_ is… it’s 2019, it should be unheard of. But what was that like for you when you heard the news? What was the reaction at home?”

Steve swallowed slowly and tried to steady himself. There were tears in his eyes, but all he had to do was breathe deeply to keep his cool and stop the tears from falling. 

“Uhh, well. None of it feels real yet,” Steve said after a brief pause, quickly clearing his throat. “There’s been talk about a nomination since _Seeking Asylum_ came out, but in this business, you try not to let flattery and talk get to your head. And like you said, it’s practically unheard of: Tony was eight months old when Raul Julia was nominated in 1985. Then, of course, we have the whole Evil Eye thing to consider - that’s never been a part of my life before—and if I’m honest, I’m not quite sure I get it yet? But that meant that in our house, we had to treat it like a normal Sunday night, a normal Monday,” Steve told Jimmy and the audience. Then, with a tone of incredulity, he added, “It was my dad who broke the news.”

“Your dad?” Jimmy asked in surprise, “not your agent or—”

“I think they’d gone straight to voicemail,” Steve replied, because that did make the most sense, after all. “There’s only a few people whose calls come through when we’re sleeping—we have friends all over the world, nobody can keep track of who is in what time zone, so our phones don't ring at night unless it’s our parents. And dad is… well,” Steve trailed off, then quickly changed tack. “Let’s put it this way: for the longest time, Tony wasn’t sure my dad even liked him. So I wake up and it’s dad calling at five in the morning—immediately I’m thinking the worst has happened, because why else would dad call before dawn? I’m asking if mom’s okay, if he’s okay, and at the same time I’m shaking Tony awake and telling him to get us the first tickets back to Boston when dad - in his typical calm, serious voice - just says, ‘I want to talk to Tony.’ So we switch phones: I finish booking the tickets while Tony tries to wake up enough to talk to my dad. And I don’t know what my dad said to him, they still won’t tell me,” Steve wryly observed, a quick interjection in his own story, “but at the time, all I could see was Tony starting to cry. So, of course, now I’m thinking that dad’s heard something about Tony’s mom and we should really be going to New York to see her, so I book the first tickets out to New York, just in case.”

“You’re clearly the guy we want in a crisis,” Jimmy noted with harmless sarcasm, and Steve couldn’t help but laugh. 

“I’m not usually this bad! But it wasn’t as if someone in the family was expecting, or, or anything else positive that could happen at 5am… yeah, no, it wasn’t my brightest moment,” he admitted with a self-deprecating grin. “And remember, this is breaking news, it wasn’t as if there weren’t any clues: the whole time I’m booking the tickets to New York, dozens of notifications are popping up on Tony’s phone, friends, colleagues, news, Twitter—and I keep cursing them, I’m trying to dismiss them and they keep getting in the way—until I miss and open one article accidentally where Tony’s name is in the headline. Finally it dawns on me. I start crying, and I look and see Tony’s already a mess. We talked to my mom, his mom, then drank a gallon of water to rehydrate and went back to bed, because it was still five in the morning and I’d come off a night-shoot just a few hours earlier.” 

The audience, who’d been laughing and making noises throughout the story, finally burst into cheerful laughter in the end, and even Jimmy couldn’t help but snicker at the rather anticlimactic end. Whether they could read between the lines or not wasn’t Steve’s problem.

“So this is going to be the least stressful holiday, right?” he laughed, “between now and January 5th, will you be able to think about anything else?”

Steve laughed, blushing despite himself. “We actually do have exciting plans coming up for the holidays, I think we’ll be fine. We finished up the house in Portugal, so we finally have a place big enough to host family and friends for Christmas. We’ve been wanting to do that for a long time, because usually we spend a few days with my parents then go to Mexico with Tony’s. This will be the first time we’re all together in one place, and we’re inviting our close friends, too—we’re really excited.”

“That sounds like a great party,” Jimmy said with an impressed nod, “will the other Avengers be there?”

“Oh yeah, a good number of them. They’re practically family,” Steve said, “it wouldn’t be the same without them.”

“And you don’t think the rest of your family gets star-struck? How would you keep it together when you’re having breakfast next to Spider-man?”

The audience laughed, and Steve couldn’t help but chuckle, too, though in the end he just shrugged it off. “Once you get past the Louboutin, Peter Parker is the least intimidating person you could imagine. It doesn’t matter how famous you become, you’re still a person at the end of the day, and if you’re nice, people will want to spend time with you. I mean, listen. I do it every day: Tony is my partner and my best friend,” he added in a show of giddy playfulness he rarely revealed on camera, “but if you don’t think I’m his biggest fan, too—I see his movies in theaters - by myself or with friends though, because if you take Tony to a movie he’s in, he won’t stop talking. And he’s got all these incredible fans, too, there’s a great community online that I’ve been following for years, _Iron Buns Daily_. I follow them online, their Twitter, everything.”

The audience laughed, but there were a handful of people who audibly gasped. Without thinking, Steve turned in the direction where he thought they came from and smiled shamelessly. 

“Really?” Jimmy laughed in genuine surprise, and Steve turned his attention back to him. “Do you—do you ever, like, talk to them?”

“I’m a fan, why wouldn’t I talk to other fans?” Steve asked in a tone that suggested Jimmy’s question was the silly one, leaving the ‘duh’ implied. 

“Do you - no, but do they know it’s you?” Jimmy pressed, still giggling to himself, “do they know they’re talking to Captain America?”

Steve grinned at the question, but shook his head. “No, no of course not,” he replied, smiling at the thought. “Some might have guessed it, or now they’ll start figuring it out, but it’s not something I advertise. Sometimes I see questions and answer them - it’s a great way to pass the time on set, I can tell you that much. And when big news like this breaks out, it’s the best. Everyone descends on the blog and it’s a lot of fun. But they don’t need to know who I am, and I don’t need them to, either. It’s my chance to be excited and a fan without having attention on me, you know?”

“I can see that,” Jimmy admitted, “the only difference is at the end of the day you get to go home to Tony Stark and they don’t.”

Steve’s smile scrunched with impish delight, flashing a possessive, mischievous grin that left little to the imagination. “Damn right I do.”


	6. Skipping forward

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Given the low response in general to my fic and writing, I'm saving myself from the accompanying anxiety and feelings of failure by finishing this fic up much more quickly than I otherwise would have. 
> 
> In this chapter, I'm going to give you an outline of what would happen (both in 'Present day' and future dates) so you can enjoy the already written finale at the end.

**Present day, London **

Simple problems and sources of irritations build to petty fights, and it takes a lot of arguing and banishing each other (or themselves) to the guest room to finally have an open conversation about how upset they are that work will separate them in a few months time. They decide that if they want a relationship, neither of them wants to do it long-distance, so from the fighting they decide that (1) they'll choose projects together and (2) they never accept work at the same time, unless by some miracle both projects are set out of the same city. 

**Twenty-two months later, New York City**

Tony interviewed by Seth Meyer talking about the episode of SNL he's hosting the week before the Academy Awards, where Tony makes it very, very clear which one is more intimidating and exciting. 

**Present day, Philadelphia**

Tony is working on what he thinks is his last project - a short series modern adaptation of _Othello -_ and comes home to a Steve who, until now has seen his time off to be with Tony while Tony works as his first serious vacation in a decade, is starting to see how comfortable living with no strict diets affects his body. When Tony finally realizes what the problem is (which is the last thing Steve wants to open up about), he makes it his mission to show Steve just how much he is loving and turned on by the softer body and absence of definition. 


	7. Twenty-two months and three days later

“You promise you won’t leave this house?” 

Steve looked up from his enormous order of sushi and gave Tony a long-suffering look. “Yes, Tony: I’ll be right here binge-watching _Derry Girls_. Nothing is going to happen.”

“And you won’t try to sneak into the audience in a hoodie and sunglasses? Or surprise me in my dressing room? Or swap places with my driver and surprise me—”

“Tony!” Steve laughed though he genuinely tried not to; Tony was stressing out in a way he hadn’t witnessed before and Steve didn’t want to appear patronizing. But also, where had this Tony had been during the worst of award season? 

“Tony, you asked me not to come or watch it live on TV,” Steve reminded him in a gentler tone, “and I promised I won’t. Unless there’s some freak acci—”

“Don’t you even say it,” Tony hissed through gritted teeth and Steve quickly shut up. 

“Sorry, didn’t mean that,” he somehow apologized without laughing himself hoarse. “I’ll be right here with Netflix all night, okay?”

Tony swallowed hard, nodding uncomfortably in an effort to convince himself that Steve was right. “Yeah,” he agreed, though he clearly didn’t believe it for a second. “Yeah, right. You’re right. You will be fine, I will be fine. I will go there and do what we’ve rehearsed—”

“Exactly, you know what’s going to happen.”

“It’s going to be fine. And then I’ll come home safely, and you will be here, safe and alive—”

“Very much alive,” Steve promised. 

“You won’t be poisoned by bad fish or choke without anyone around to give you the Heimlich,” Tony told them both, “and I won’t die on the drive over there, or on the drive back, or when a chandelier falls on me in the middle of the monologue, or—”

Death a la _Phantom of the Opera_ was the final straw. Steve clapped a hand over his chest and fell back into the couch, laughing so hard he was near tears. 

“Tony! What is wrong with you, oh my god!” 

“This isn’t funny! This is too good to be true, you know it is—”

“Tony, you’re nominated for an _Oscar!_” 

“You know as well as I do that’s all political,” Tony brushed off in a way he never would’ve been able to do a month ago. “SNL is a, an honor.”

Steve gave him a strangled look. Sometimes he wished there was a third person around just so he could have someone to validate him. “Tony, even Donald Trump’s done it.”

Tony looked like he’d been slapped. “Qu—lo puto Trump? Steve! Deja de ser un cabron!”

“Sweetheart, _I’ve_ done it twice and nothing happened!”

“You didn’t worship them growing up,” Tony reminded him with a frown. He grimaced at a thought, but then he took a final, calming breath and moved on to the point he wanted to make all along. 

“So, if I die tonight—”

“_You are not going to die tonight_.”

“Shh! Listen to me: if I die tonight, I’ve left you instructions. They’re in my journal, it’s in the office on top of my laptop.”

Tony went on to explain how to find the right pages, but Steve tuned most of it out in his dumbfounded shock. 

“Hold—hold up, hang on, Tony,” he waved his hands and tried to find the right words so he wouldn’t sound crazy. “You’ve left me instructions in the event of your death? What kind of instructions?”

“You have to make sure my mom has at least three cats at all times,” Tony recited from memory. “I’ve brainstormed stories for the next fifteen years for ways you can get your parents down to Portugal every summer, so you should be okay there. We need your dad to retire already and move them both there, but short term goals: get her there every summer. She’s only going to get worse in Boston, so you can’t forget it. And after an appropriate mourning period, you need to move on—but you can _never_ let your future wife or husband sleep in our bed in Portugal. I also have a list of twelve people that you may never marry. Break any of these rules, and I will haunt you until the day you die.”

Tony’s ‘final preparations’ sounded really touching at first, and out of morbid curiosity, Steve almost wanted to read what Tony had written for him. 

But as Tony got to the meat of the issue, Steve could only stare at his needlessly jealous husband, dumbfounded. 

“There are twelve people I am not allowed to marry?” he repeated, slowly and disbelieving. 

“If you desperately need to, you can fuck them; get it out of your system,” Tony said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “But not in our bed! And only once.”

Forgetting any sense of urgency he’d felt mere minutes ago about Tony getting to the studio on time, Steve leaned back and casually asked, “Who are they, Tony? Pray tell.”

“Rhodey,” Tony said right off the top, which made sense. “Anna Kendrick. Emma Thompson.”

“What?”

“Don’t you dare pretend she isn’t hot,” Tony narrowed his eyes in anger, and if Tony wasn’t so stressed, Steve would have argued the point just for fun. Instead, he held up his hands in a show of surrender and gestured for Tony to continue. 

“Lizzo. Charlize Theron. Anne Hathaway. Rebel Wilson. Jason Mamoa. Rachel Weisz. Rachel Weisz’s husband.”

“Daniel Craig.”

“Right, him. Amy Adams. Eddie Redmayne.”

“I am very confused by what you think my type is,” Steve observed quietly, struggling to form any rational response. “But, I can fuck them all once each? That’s allowed?”

Tony grimaced quietly, but grudgingly agreed. “Except Rhodey.”

“That’s fair. What if it’s a threeway with Rachel and Daniel?” Steve wondered curiously. “Does that count as one or two?”

Tony’s grimace curdled into snarl. “Fuck you,” he glowered, “I hope I don’t die so you never get to know!”

Steve stared at him, wondering if Tony heard his own words anymore. 

“Good! That makes two of us, Tony! Would you please go and do your monologue, do the sketches, then come home so I can fuck _you_ instead of these people - many of whom are married, by the way, that’s - I don’t know what you were thinking.”

“It’s _Hollywood_,” Tony reminded him, but angry and stressed as he was, he still came around the couch to kiss his own husband good-bye. 

It was only meant to be a peck, but Steve couldn’t resist getting his arms around Tony and pulling him into his lap to give him a hungry, filthy kiss worth coming back to continue. When he finally let Tony pull away they were both panting for breath, and Steve could barely tear his attention from Tony’s swollen, spit-slick red lips. 

“Go before you’re late, do the show and come back safely. Please don’t die,” he felt the need to say even though it sounded silly, “because if you do, I will do my best to date Anna Kendrick just to get back at you for making me a widower. Okay? And if that’s not incentive enough,” he said, lowering his voice into a deep, guttural growl. “When you come home, we will watch tonight’s show together. I am going to suck your dick through the whole monologue, then eat your ass out for every second that the musical guest is performing. How’s that for clear instructions?”

If Tony had any remaining concerns about how the night could go wrong, he was no longer able to communicate them. His lips were parted in silent wonder, and Steve kissed him soundly one last time before pulling away to help Tony to his feet. Wandering hands and kisses turned the short and simple walk to the front door into a whole procession, but finally Steve sent him off with the waiting driver and watched him go see a life-long dream come true.


	8. Present day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To quickly describe the jump we just did: 
> 
> **Present day, Lisbon** \- They arrive in Lisbon, and Tony falls in love at first sight. Until he meets Benedita, Steve’s romantic costar in this spy movie who is so beautiful and sweet and nice and lovely that it makes him see red.
> 
> **Two years later, Los Angeles** \- Golden Globes ceremony, Steve and Tony attend together; the former is very much anxious and excited about who might take home Best Actor in Motion Picture Drama, while the latter is convinced De Niro is taking it home for _The Irishman_ and nearly goes into shock when the presenter calls his name. 
> 
> Which brings us here: back to the Present.

Historically, surprises that follow six weeks of missed dates and flimsy excuses weren’t the kind of surprises Tony liked. 

“You know I’ve already forgiven you, right?” Tony said when Steve made yet another benign, pleasant comment about the scenery passing them by along the Portuguese coastal highway. 

Steve blinked at the unexpected response to his excitement about a rhinoceros gargoyle. Luckily, he was smarter than people gave him credit for. 

“Tony, I’ve missed spending time with you, too,” he said softly. “Benedita showed me this place a month ago and, I’ve… Tony, I’ve wanted to come back here with you ever since.”

How nice of Benedita, taking Tony’s boyfriend somewhere secluded, beautiful, and tremendously romantic. Kind, generous Benedita, who was two years younger than Tony and had flawless skin and a smile to light up a room and spoke a gazillion languages (probably) and who, at this point, had enjoyed as much of Steve’s free time since they moved to Portugal as Tony. 

“Steve, we’re going somewhere you won’t tell me about, for reasons you won’t explain, after weeks of excuses Lois Lane wouldn’t even believe—”

“If you would just—” Steve shut up abruptly, setting his jaw and wringing his hands on the wheel. Tony watched him like a hawk, waiting for the truth to spill out of him now that he’d gone as far as to raise his voice, but it seemed Steve stuck the landing and managed to calm himself again. 

“Trust me and enjoy the scenery for twenty more minutes, Tony. Please? We can fight in thirty minutes, but we’ll be there in twenty.”

Tony took a deep breath, held it for a count of four, then slowly let it out. When that didn’t work, he tried distracting himself by staring out the window in silence. The tension in the car and the familiar feeling of being watched told him Steve continued to glance his way, but Tony waited until he could quiet his own insecurities. 

“Are we going to a funeral?” Tony eventually asked, willing the anger out of his tone. 

The question stumped Steve at first. “Because of the hydrangeas?” Tony hummed in the affirmative. “It’s a long story, but no, not a funeral. I wanted to plant them. With you.”

“...you wanted to plant flowers with me?” 

“Technically, hydrangeas are bushes,” Steve said—not because it mattered, but because they finally had something neutral to talk about. “They change color based on the acidity in the soil, and I don’t know what’s going on in this country but they’ve got the most beautiful hydrangeas I’ve ever seen so I thought, you know… maybe we should, uh. Do this instead?”

He trailed off with a dodgy look, which told Tony he’d unintentionally toed into non-neutral territory again. But Steve asked for twenty minutes and it was nice to talk to his best friend again, so Tony scrabbled for another safe question.

“Is there a reason you got eight of them?” he wondered, and Steve huffed a laugh that ended in a groan of embarrassment. 

“No,” he sighed eventually. “No, I just… I kept wanting to bring it up. I picked one up from the market on the way home, thinking, ‘this is the best one,’” he explained with a quiet, self-deprecating snort that had Tony instinctively reaching out for him, rubbing his hand over Steve’s knee in comfort. “But by the time I got home, it wasn’t beautiful enough to make me sound less like an idiot, so I, well.”

“You went back and got another one the next day,” Tony filled in with a knowing but curious smile. “I don’t remember the last time you felt nervous about telling me something.”

Steve’s lips twisted in a rueful smile. He covered Tony’s hand with his own and gave him a fond squeeze in return. “I don’t remember the last time I made you this mad—and I know it’s me,” he promised in undertone, bringing Tony’s hand up for a quick kiss before having to let go to change gear. “I didn’t want to make it worse.”

He turned off the highway, and Tony watched Steve thoughtfully as he maneuver through the narrow roads bordering the national park. It sounded like Steve was struggling to apologize, and since he was distracted enough by the driving, Tony took the time to think about his own feelings. Yes, he was upset, and yes, he felt betrayed these past six weeks, but was it enough to push Steve away before he could explain himself? 

The answer was obvious, despite the festering voice of jealousy couldn’t help but point out how beautiful the landscape around them was. They turned off the highway mere minutes ago and already they had lost sight of civilization. Of all the reasons Benedita (or anyone else) might want to bring his handsome boyfriend out somewhere so secluded and unspeakably beautiful, how many would leave Tony happy?

Tony willed himself to look at his watch again. Five minutes until this ‘surprise’; fifteen minutes until their fight. He could hold out for five minutes. With another steadying breath, Tony turned in his seat to take in the incredible view of the ocean waves crashing into the craggly, dramatic cliffs below. The trees and little animals they spotted seemed perfectly at ease, clearly (and happily) undisturbed by humans, which made it all the more jarring in the end when they reached a black iron gate. 

Tony watched Steve punch in the code from memory and pull through to the gravel driveway with the confidence of a man who had been there many times before. There was just enough time for Tony’s blood to boil before he noticed their destination. 

In the embrace of lush, flowering trees stood a stately, three story villa. It belonged in a fairy tale more than the real world, with its three chimneys and terracotta roof. It looked settled in its lush embrace of lemon trees, with peach colored stucco walls and off-white granite steps leading to a sprawling porch. The windows were decorated with white, hand-carved frames, but without the typical ornate frills and arches of Mediterranean architecture, it looked understated in its elegance. 

Spellbound, Tony stepped out of the car and gravitated to Steve in slow, shuffling steps. 

“Come with me,” Steve whispered, taking Tony by the hand and leading him around the back. Any coordinated movement was challenging, and Tony couldn’t stop staring. The house wasn’t as simple as the facade made it out to be; the villa’s side stretched far ahead of them, and it wasn’t until they were all the way around that Tony realized the house had wings. The two lateral wings created a generous alcove which had been turned into a private garden with marble flooring and walls decorated with beautiful hand-painted tiles depicting whimsical landscapes and playful animals. The marble porch extended away from the house, creating a smooth walkway and a short series of steps that reached a deep, wide-set pool. 

Steve led them to the top of the marble stairs where Tony could get a full view of the villa with its classic symmetric design to his right, and the clear, peaceful pool to his left. If he said anything those first few minutes, Tony didn’t hear him. All he could think about was the house and how the new perspective showed the gardens behind it stretching out into the treeline of the park beyond. It was a mansion, a sprawling, timeless country estate, but part of its charm was how little it interfered with the beauty of the world around it. In the distance the ocean reached out past the trees, dark, endless, and full of mysterious life, a stark contrast to the sun-warm water in the pool that was so clear Tony could make out every glass tile in the vibrant blue-green mosaic lining the sides and bottom. 

It was all too beautiful to be true. 

“What is this place?” Tony whispered, intentionally keeping his voice low in case he started shouting uncontrollably about how many times Steve had been there with Benedita.

“Do you remember what we did for my birthday this year?” Steve asked Tony instead, apropos of nothing. 

The question surprised Tony enough to take his attention away from the scenery, and he looked up at Steve with a questioning look. “Yeah, you had a concussion the day before from a motorcycle stunt,” Tony recalled easily. “We stayed in and had a DIY spa day and watched _Cool Hand Luke_. You changed your ringtone to ‘America, Fuck Yeah’ so everytime someone called to wish you a happy birthday that obnoxious song got stuck in my head.”

Steve visibly bit down on a smug smirk, then prompted Tony along. “And you made me a…” 

“A peanut butter lasagna.”

“With the custard from those pastries I love.”

“Pasteis de nata.”

“I was recovering from the concussion and you still made it the best birthday I’ve ever had,” Steve told him with a fond smile. He opened his mouth to continue, but like they had every day that week when he came home with flowers, Steve’s words failed him. 

Quickly, Steve cleared his throat and looked down at their joined hands long enough to re-group. 

“These past six weeks that I’ve been spending time with Benedita on my days off,” he continued quietly, “you have every right to be angry, Tony. I was lying to you; I wasn’t helping her promote a community center.”

His admission burned through Tony with a devastating shock and a bitter validation at the same time. Tony _knew_ it was a lie—he _knew_ Steve, he should have trusted his own instinct and confronted him weeks ago when it all started—

“She was helping me find an engagement ring for you.”

A long beat passed between Tony cursing himself for his blind trust in Steve and hearing what Steve actually said. 

This time, the shock was numbing. Tony couldn’t hear the laughing gulls anymore, or feel the chill of the ocean breeze on his skin. Whether he wanted to or not, he couldn’t move a muscle or even breathe as he watched Steve go down on one knee. 

Steve held Tony’s hand for support, and with his free hand he offered Tony an old iron key. 

“Two years ago, I fell in love with you in a way I didn’t think was possible. Every day, you show me new reasons to love you more. But you’ve only just started your career and I don’t want to rush you,” Steve acknowledged, doing his best to be clear with his words even as his voice trembled. “You don’t have to answer today; you don’t have to answer ten years from now. This is just me telling you that I’m never better or happier than when I am with you, Tony. You’re my best friend, there’s nobody whose opinion or trust I value more, and I want to build a life with you.”

How could one feel weightless and still not move? Tony’s heart pounded in his chest and his eyes burned with the tears lodged in his throat. He struggled to form words, to get the air past his leaden tongue, until finally he gave up on words and hauled Steve to his feet so he could fall into him, to hold on and breathe him in and find his balance again in this crazy world that was spinning faster than ever before. 

It wasn’t until Steve squeezed Tony in his safe, strong arms that Tony dared to believe it was real. 

Smiling and crying in his shock of gleeful excitement, Tony pulled back to wrap his arms around Steve’s neck, keeping him captive for kiss after breathless kiss until Steve had no doubt of his answer. 

“You thought,” Tony growled against Steve’s laughing lips as his shock dulled into disbelieving joy, “you really thought I wouldn’t want to lock this down?” Tony stole another kiss, a filthy, unhurried slide of tongue and lips and scraping teeth until he had to pull away, panting against Steve’s swollen, spit-slick mouth. 

“Everyone is talking about you,” Steve murmured proudly between kisses, as if Tony’s career could ever mean more than their life together. “This is the time you should be jumping on different projects, new opportunities, not waiting on me—”

Tony quieted him with an unexpected slip of tongue, a deep, possessive kiss that left Steve moaning instead of voicing any concerns. 

“The professionals call it a work-life balance,” Tony rumbled playfully once he pulled away, panting softly again against Steve’s parted lips. “You’re a big part of that, Steve. I want to marry you; I want you in my corner, full stop. You took seven months off to be with me before this,” Tony reminded him. “Did you regret it?”

The question caught Steve by surprise, and he straightened enough to put distance between their lips. It was almost enough for Tony to regret his question. 

“I’ve been in this business for thirteen years, Tony,” Steve replied, speaking in a calm tone to avoid sounding patronizing. “There’s a big difference between what either of us should and shouldn’t do.” 

“And I’m not half as worried about my career as I was about how today would end,” Tony admitted before his pride interfered. The least Tony could do was to put himself out there after Steve took a chance and proposed. “Steve, I thought you were breaking up with me.”

If Steve looked confused before, he was outright dumbfounded now. “...did you think Benedita and I?”

“I thought you were pulling away,” Tony said instead, because at the end of the day it wasn’t about her, it was about _them_. “And Google said the flowers you’ve been bringing home this week are for apologies. What was I meant to think?”

“Hydrangeas are for apologies?” Steve echoed under his breath in disbelief, and a faint blush of embarrassment rose in his cheeks. “Christ, I didn’t—Tony, I was trying to propose!” he all but croaked, a breath away from laughing at his damn misjudgment. “I thought I’d hide the key in the flowers, give you the flower pot, and let you find the key. I thought it’d be ...romantic, I’d bring you here, we’d plant the flower in the garden so we’d always see it - except I never knew what to say. So, I brought you here instead. It was simpler,” he admitted with a sheepish smile that Tony couldn’t resist comforting with another kiss. 

“You could’ve gotten me a ring, you know,” Tony teased with such a fond, loving smile that Steve relaxed and let the embarrassment pass. “Any ring, Steve. A donut. You went through all this trouble?” 

Steve snorted at the question, shaking his head at a thought. “You don’t know the half of it. I was going to buy you a ring, at first,” Steve said with a wistful smile. His attention briefly fell to Tony’s left hand, and he turned it gently so he could sweep the pad of his thumb over Tony’s naked ring finger. “I love your hands,” he couldn’t help but say before continuing to tell Tony what happened. 

“I had it down to five rings when your mom was showing my parents around New York, so I called them.”

Tony’s mouth fell open in a tiny, unvoiced _‘oh no.’_ Their parents were good people and thankfully got along, but they rarely agreed and were even less helpful. You didn’t ask them for input unless you already knew what you needed and only wanted them to feel included. 

“My mom was against any kind of flashy, colorful ring, because it’s easier to coordinate outfits with classic looks, but _your_ mom was all about sapphires, because unlike most stones, they appreciate in value.”

Tony rolled his eyes and dropped his forehead against Steve’s shoulder. “No! She likes them because she worships Princess Diana,” he groaned under his breath. 

Steve chuckled at Tony’s momentary pang of parental embarrassment and absolutely took advantage of it by cuddling him for comfort. 

“Then my dad said,” Steve continued more quietly, nuzzling into Tony’s hair. “‘What’s he going to do with a ring? Get him something he can use.’”

Without moving from his comfortable home in Steve’s arms, Tony asked, “Doesn’t your mom have a ring?”

“It’s old-school sexism,” Steve agreed without beating around the bush. “He thinks women go crazy for jewelry, but men, I don’t know, prefer cars and boats and power tools. But it stayed with me anyway, and I thought it wouldn’t hurt to look… then I learned that there were palaces for sale in the same price range as the rings I was looking at, and _then_ I started over-thinking it—”

Tony burst out laughing. “What!” he cried between the laughter, clinging as Steve shifted to try to see him until he finally calmed to mad giggling and he could look at Steve’s blushing, handsome face without starting to laugh again. “Sorry not sorry, babe, it’s just—‘then’ you started over-thinking? You ‘narrowed it down’ to five rings _and_ you talked to our parents. The same parents who never agree on anything except that one time they wanted us to live in a winnebago so we’d always ‘be home’ when we moved to different sets? You’re light-years past overthinking.”

“Then prepare to learn a whole new level of second-hand embarrassment,” Steve warned him with a fond smile, brushing Tony’s happy tears away with a gentle touch. “I called Peggy—”

“That’s always a good choice.”

“I asked her to find someone who could evaluate property.”

“Approaching critical overthinking tipping-point,” Tony whispered in his mock-narrative of Steve’s play-by-play. 

“I looked at four estates here, a condo in San Francisco, a beach house in Malibu, and the two rings that had sapphires—”

Without thinking, Tony took a small step back so he could look at the idiot he was clearly going to marry. “Did Peggy tell you that you were out of your mind?”

“So they warned me against California real estate since the housing bubble is on the verge of collapse,” Steve continued, ignoring Tony’s very sensible question and noticeably redder than before, “but I couldn’t stop thinking that a marriage proposal isn’t just to say how much I love and appreciate you: it’s my chance to show you how incredible I think our future will be together. And, I could be wrong,” he finished wryly, “but I thought that was better expressed with a sixteenth century palace, eight guest houses, forty-nine bedrooms, and a pool than a sapphire ring.”

The villa was stunning, beautiful and breath-taking and timeless, but _a sixteenth century palace?_ Tony couldn’t stop staring, either at Steve or the house. He needed a minute to regroup. 

“So long as you know I’m marrying you for you,” he said quietly, in the end. “That’s a lot of pressure you put on yourself, Steve. You didn’t have to buy us a house, my answer would’ve been the same if you’d asked me empty-handed.”

“Not us: you,” Steve corrected, again taking Tony’s hands in his for a gentle squeeze - but this time he didn’t look away from Tony’s eyes, searching his expression for any sign of doubt. “It can be this house, or if you don’t like it, a different house; a boat, a ring. Whatever you want, it belongs to you. But when I look at this place, I think of your mom who doesn’t like New York winters, and my dad who never takes vacations. I think about the dementia in mom’s family and all the ways she could keep active here at any time of the year. I think about hosting a Christmas where we can actually see our parents and Alma’s family at the same time. We can have our wedding here; the place comes with its own chapel. We can host our friends on holidays, or just get away when LA is too much.” 

Tony didn’t know what to say. For a second he found the will to look away from his Steve to look at the house again, imagining all of the love and laughter and memories Steve saw there already. They could grow old here together, kept safe by the soothing privacy of the forest and the sea all around them. 

Finally, he turned back to Steve and stretched to steal another kiss (and another) before taking his hand. 

“You know, you’ve never been more convincing. But why don’t you show me more so I can make a well-informed decision?” he said, handing Steve the key. “And, Steve? Just in case that wasn’t clear enough, your husband-to-be wants you to start this very important, intensely thorough inspection in the bedroom.”


End file.
